


On Neptune's Sands

by fresne



Category: A Midsummer Night's Dream - All Media Types, Hindu Mythology, Midsummer Night's Dream - Shakespeare
Genre: Bechdel Test Pass, F/M, Gen, North India, Prequel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-07
Updated: 2015-09-07
Packaged: 2018-04-19 10:14:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,428
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4742531
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fresne/pseuds/fresne
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The fairy land buys not the child of me.<br/>His mother was a votaress of my order:<br/>And, in the spiced Indian air, by night,<br/>Full often hath she gossip'd by my side,<br/>And sat with me on Neptune's yellow sands,<br/>Marking the embarked traders on the flood,<br/>When we have laugh'd to see the sails conceive<br/>And grow big-bellied with the wanton wind;<br/>Which she, with pretty and with swimming gait<br/>Following,--her womb then rich with my young squire,--<br/>Would imitate, and sail upon the land,<br/>To fetch me trifles, and return again,<br/>As from a voyage, rich with merchandise.<br/>But she, being mortal, of that boy did die;<br/>And for her sake do I rear up her boy,<br/>And for her sake I will not part with him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	On Neptune's Sands

**Author's Note:**

  * For [lavenderfrost](https://archiveofourown.org/users/lavenderfrost/gifts).



> This forms a sort of tryptic. Hmmm... to backup, after lavenderfrost did such a wonderful recording of "After She Wakes" - [go listen to it](http://archiveofourown.org/works/4399865)), I asked if she had any unfilled prompts. Three (okay more than that, but this is what came out) stories caught my fancy. Titantia (contemporary of Theseus and therefore ancient history), Portia the not-so-secret-badass, and Beatrice's reasons for avoiding marriage in Much Ado. Well, and as you may be able to tell the witches of Macbeth. Or rather, tripled goddesses, which infused the three works, and why there's three.
> 
> This is Titania's story. I got to thinking about that Indian Votaress, back in the mythological era. A relationship that could bloom so firmly in a fairies heart that not fairy land could purchase that child. No changeling, but someone beloved. Oberon sees the child in the context of a King's son. While Titania saw a dear friend's child.
> 
> Hope it delivers on the idea that there need to be more stories with Shakespearean Ladies getting their due out there.
> 
> The following may be considered as inspiration for my work and inspiration for my dialogue:  
> WS, A Midsummer Night's Dream  
> WS, Macbeth  
> Mahabarata  
> Manu Smriti

Brittle and hard, Titania rattled as an autumn leaf winter hollowed may go. Little more than a skeleton on the breeze. 

Her Lord had gone to a winter's rest in their barrow as easily as a stag throws off his horns. Titania had never had such an easy course. 

She tumbled on the gales that she blew until she came to a desert below black serrated mountains such that suited her mood. She set the fairies of her train from her and brooded for an hour or an age. She spun dust at travellers on the long Silk Road. She crackled lightning on a mountain peak and curdled milk in the goats grazing there. She scowled ruffled waves in the rounded lakes that cupped in the hollows of the mountain's hands before flowing into the wide Saraswati River in the valley below.

She brooded and spun and ruffled, until she was quite weary of her own mood. But her flower pensioners still lay under winter snows, and all that was left was the river flowing away into the desert.

There by the river banks, she ignored the three Ladies who were there.

They did not ignore her. They put hennaed hands to plump lips as one when they saw her. 

"Good morning, Queen of Air and Shadows," said Saraswati the Black. She wrung milk of out of her long white hair into the river, where it flowed away. The people fishing on the river banks could not see her for all that they exclaimed at the fish that grew fat there.

"Good day, Queen of Earth and Illusion," said Saraswati the Blue. She waded ankle deep and urged the flood higher and higher with her sword of watered steel and net of contagious fog.

Saraswati the Green trailed a bronze tool in the water, which guided water into the fields. For all the farmers could not see her as they worked. "Good evening, the Queen of Summer." 

Titania fairly screamed, "In the ill night, I am the Queen of Winter too." The lightning and the gales escaped from her mouth at her words.

Saraswati the Green plucked them deftly from the air. "I'll make a ship to cross the sky from these." 

"A flying chariot with blades that spin," said Saraswati the Blue.

"A sacred stone that guides the eye within," said Saraswati the Black. 

Titania could not care. She sank to the red soaked earth like a rent sail released of the wind in her belly. Dull shadows spread from where she fell. 

The Sarawaiti laughed and the banks of the river rose ever higher until the water threatened two cities that perched alike in dignity on its banks behind their red brick walls.

Saraswati the Green said, not unkindly, "The city on the Eastern bank is Adarsana."

"The city on the Western bank is Darsana," said Saraswati the Blue. 

"If you go to one, you'll one day find love that is an illusion. If you go to the other, you'll one day find love that is the truth." Sarawati the Black wrung milk from her long white hair to froth in the river. "But even you, Queen of Illusions will not be able to tell which is which."

Titania very much wanted to ignore the Ladies. For only fair as foul and foul as fair could come of this conversation. 

She decided to go back to the mountain peak.

She set off for the cities.

She did not look back to see if the Ladies remained by the river banks. She'd used the trick of disappearing enough not to care to see it done.

She flew into the city of Adarsana and perched on a fountain. There she saw some dozen children in disordered cotton saris chase each other across a stone paved plaza. 

A soldier called out, "Be careful."

The children threw handfuls of brilliantly coloured powder at him in answer. 

He coughed and grinned and held up a wine skin, but it had no wine in it. Rather it was full of colourful water, which he skilfully squeezed to douse the children to their laughter. 

The soldier chased the greater flock through a wide carved gateway to a garden beyond. 

Titania startled herself with a dry laugh. She was still wondering at that sound when a young girl in green peered over the stone and stared at her with wide wondering eyes, which was unusual enough. Titania should have been invisible to human eyes.

"Oh, you're beautiful." The girl clapped delightedly. Then with a roguish curve of her lips, she said, "For the festival of Holi, you should be laughing. This is a fun festival." She squirted a stream of red liquid in Titania's face from a skin and ran away through the far gate. 

Titania gave chase. 

She could have caught the girl in an instant. In a flicker of wings. But Titania wanted to see what would happen if she did not.

The girl ran through the mud of the streets. She darted through crowds of people hurling colourful water or powder at each other. Titania did not waver. She chased the girl all the way to the banks of that wide river where the girl paused, and in pausing, Titania flung all the golden powder of a hundred flowers at her. 

Her prey laughed and laughed and laughed, holding her knees. Then grinning, she turned her skin of colourful water on Titania and of all things, gave chase to Titania, who was surprised with the delight of being hunted. 

So they spent the morning darted through the city and along the shore of the river, and by afternoon sat contentedly on the sands, yellow as Neptune's beard. 

The girl leaned back on her hands and splashed at the water with a bare foot, her sandals discarded on the sand beside her. "I'm Abla."

Titania cupped a hand in the water and tasted the milky grace flowing in that current. She tilted her head to look at Abla, her face still streaked with traces of colour. "Abla means wild rose. I am Queen Titania, who rules the flowers." Titania left off the other elements in her dominion. She left off the air and the shadows. The summer and the winter. The spring and the autumn. She left off the earth and illusion. 

Titania summoned her fairies and had her ladies spread out a blanket of finest spider silk, which they then covered entirely in the delicacies of fairyland. 

"Oh," said Abla. She reached into the folds of her sari and pulled out a lumpy shape wrapped in a long green leaf. She untied the ribbon holding it closed and laid the spreading leaf on the blanket. It was full of white dumplings.

Titania fluttered closer and after inhaling a moment picked one up. It tasted like the day felt and lingered saffron on her tongue.

Abla said, "It's Modak. It's my favourite." She picked up a delicate treat made from the distilled nectar of the Silver Horn flower that grows only on the Glass mountain, and bit into it. Abla closed her eyes and held it in her mouth for a long moment. When she'd done chewing, she said, "This is good too." Then she was pointing out the ships sailing down the sparkling river, eager to show off her knowledge of where the ships were going or where they had been. She told Titania about the festival, the results of celebrating currently stained her face and clothes. She wanted to know if Titania had ever met Vishnu.

It was charming. Titania was charmed. 

A soap bubble mood that burst when a woman's voice called out, "Abla, where are you? We're already late."

Titania's long nails curled through the crumbling sand as Abla scrambled to her feet. "I'm coming, Mother." Abla picked up her sandals and ran in the direction of the distant figure along the shore. The air around Titania crackled with green lightning and her nails grew sharper yet.

She was coiling to leap into the air when Abla turned back, her eyes shining with sunlight. Abla asked, "Can I see you tomorrow?"

Titania eased back on the sand. "Perhaps."

She followed them. Abla and her mother and father and brothers and sisters. They all went across the river. Titania waited for either sort of love to strike her as an arrow's blow, but nothing occurred.

Titania considered if the Sarawati had been lying, but the annoying part was they didn't lie.

On the next day, Titania considered taking Abla to hear the mermaid's singing, but instead set her to fetching more Modak from the market.

A week later, she considered whisking her off to a revel in the southern jungles amid the raindrops. Instead they sat near to the docks braiding crowns of flowers, which Abla gave away to each traveller who came ashore. Soon all those travellers grew refreshed on those blooms. 

As invisible as a breeze, Titania smiled at her young votaress handing out fairy blessings. Giving away fairy gold and fairy rubies. She smiled at the whispers that Abla was blessed. They were Titania's blessings growing along the river banks where they liked to sit.

A month later, Titania considered flying Abla to that wondrous spot where the Sarawati river disappeared into the desert sands. Only to reappear in a joyous fountain some hundred miles distant to flow finally into the shining Western sea. Instead, Titania followed Abla as Abla sang silly songs to the sick in the hospital dedicated to Lakshmi.

All too soon, Titania she felt the sap tingling through the trunks in the green wood of home and Oberon's trumpeted call. 

Titania considered this turn of the world. She sent Moonslip and Cobweb to gather branches of an oak that had not yet dropped an acorn. From this she fashioned a shape in every way a likeness of Abla.

She slipped into Abla's home. She was an uninvited guest at their meal. She hid herself in a shadow from Abla's seeing eyes. She watched Abla chatter with her brothers and sisters. She listened to her laugh and clap at her own jokes, while her Mother said, "Abla!" with no force to it and her father's lips quirked in a smile. 

Titania sat through the meal and into the night as the children were bundled off to sleep.

She even went so far as to watch Abla sleeping. She stood there hovering with one hand outstretched to snatch the girl up to fairyland where she would feast on fairy delights and never age a day further than this.

Her hand fell of its own accord. She left the figure beside the sleeping girl to be nothing more than a toy. Titania left and went to tend to snow drops pushing off sparkling snows and flowers spreading their petals in the warming of the year.

Oberon's kiss did not ask where she had been. Her answering one did not ask him what he had dreamed upon. It hardly mattered. They revelled on the shore where sea met sand. They danced in the secret places beyond the pale. 

But soft and supple as summer, the thought to return to Abla grew as sun beckoned jasmine sun may climb a wall. Until there was nothing for it but for Titania to tumble over into that flight.

She found Abla some two inches taller. Abla was weaving a flower carpet for the festival of Onam. She smiled to see Titania, as if she'd been gone for but a moment. They went down to the shores to watch dragon boats race. Abla pointed to each pregnant sail made round by the wind with such droll remarks that Titania could do nothing, but laugh.

Each time Titania left, she considered stealing Abla to the Summerland, but always her hand fell of its own accord. She spoke of it a time or two with her votaress, who would smile and say, "Someday, I want to see it. But for now," she'd let her fingers drift into the milky flow of the river, I'd like to tell the world of you here."

Titania did not have much room in her heart to resist her own will or pleasure. She was, after all, a Queen. But it always seemed a soft flood rose on Abla's words, and Titania left her to her growing.

It seemed for a time that Abla grew taller on each new visit. She grew as that jasmine vine might into mature growth and full flower. 

Titania delighted in affixing flowers in her hair and clothing. Abla would smile and say, "The women in the market are jealous of your favour. You make me beautiful in their eyes."

"The women," Titania said, "are there no young men you want to see you as beautiful?" Though she well knew the answer for Abla had told her of the handsome Raj Perusa, who had come courting with boats full of flowers.

Abla spread her hands covered in the mehndi drawings of flowers that Titania herself had laboured to put there. "Women are the harder judges and therefore the more worth having."

"That was not my question," said Titania dipping her brush into the ink of darkest night. "I asked of young love." Abla laughed as Titania tickled her with shadows.

Later, when Titania readied to go, Abla said, "Please come visit me in a week. On the night when the moon is at her hungriest."

It was a request, not a command. A supplication from her votaress. Of course Titania returned on that night.

Abla stood on the wall of her city. She was holding a yellow sphere of wood and pulped bark. She said, "You're just in time." She lit something within the sphere and threw it into the air, where it floated in the still night. The murmuring, laughing crowd soon cast up their own lights, until it seemed as if there were a hundred moons.

Titania, who could make it seem as if there were a hundred moons on a whim, clapped her hands. She said, "What is this festival for?"

Abla smiled. "It is your festival. I arranged it in your honour, and here you are." 

Titania felt her heart swell as a river might do. She watched her lights in the sky.

They gossiped long into the night spiced air. Surrounded by the crowd, part and apart from it. Abla went a time or two to fetch treats to tempt Titania, who watched the lanterns slowly set into the black river. 

When what was left were stars, Titania asked, "The people in the other city didn't observe my festival. Shall I curse them?" It was not entirely an idle question. Titania liked having a festival. She liked being honoured. There was not much room in her heart for more than her own pleasure. She was a Queen.

Abla's laugh floated up to where the moon was finally putting in an appearance. "There aren't two cities. There's only one city separated by a river." She tilted her head and coil of hair escaped from where Titania had pinned it up with dew pearls. "Anyway," she pointed to the far side with its distant lights that made poor war with the lights of heaven. "As well you know, my lover, Raj Perusa, lives on the far side of the river." She glanced down shyly as she told Titania this. "But I told him tonight was your night. I hope he was watching though." She pursed her lips. "That looked like a dandelion puff."

Titania was willing to banter in her festival's defence. "No! More like wizards courting mermaids."

"Seeds thrown to birds."

"No! The results of trysting clouds." Titania licked her lips. "Dragons eggs."

Abla tapped her cheek. "Burning feathers."

Titania wrinkled her nose. "No!" She laughed. Day or evening with Abla always ended in laughter. 

But even as lovely as it was, that night came to an end.

In time, Abla's belly grew round with child. As Titania said, "That is the result of trysting with pretty lovers."

Titania took up residence in her small temple beside the palace. While Abla moved into the palace of Raj Perusa after he laid siege to her with many reasonable requests and some tears.

Even so settled, Abla insisted on going to the market and bringing back treats for Titania. In response, Titania brought with her a hundred fairy hands to make work light and every day full of song. 

If those fairies played tricks, they were merry ones and soon mended. There was never a year with better crops or quicker mended garments.

It was a sweet nine months. Too soon ended. 

Strangely quiet a birth that had fairy magic to take the pain away. It had never occurred to Titania that being mortal, of that child, Abla could die. 

That she'd grow grey lipped and chapped, eyes fever bright, and slip away whispering, "I meant to stay longer."

The boy screamed for his mother, as well he might. While Raj Perusa's face folded in on itself and it was a poor sort of love that died the instant the reason for it left the room.

Fairy hands wound Abla's body into a long cloth and placed her into a boat of lightning and gales that bobbed upon the river. Titania followed her votaress with an honour guard dressed in blue-green armour. They flew after her down that wide river to where the Sarawati disappeared into the desert sands. Only to reappear in a sudden spurt far away to race into the shining sea. 

The sun set on that sea, and that boat sailed into the west. Titania guided that boat of lightning and gails until it came to shore of the Summerland and she herself kissed Abla's eyes to opening once more onto summer.

Abla blinked once and thrice and said, "My little one?"

So full was her heart at seeing that waking, Titania could not care that Abla's first thought was for other than herself. "I'll see to your thorn," promised Titania, and that was what she did.

Titania returned to take care of little Kantaka. That was not the name given by the Raj, but the name he gave ill-suited Abla's little thorn, who was wide eyed to the fairy lights that sparkled over his bed and learned fairy letters from Titania the moment he understood what his fingers were for.

She waited with three hours more patience than anyone would have given her credit for. She did not go to consult with the Ladies at the headwaters of the river. They would only give her more truth. It was better that she simply pick him up. She did not bother to leave a wooden form in trade. "Never fear," she kissed his cheek, "My love is no illusion."

She had her fairies tend him in meadows and let him grow fast and light in dappled groves and shelter in magic ice palaces when winter required it's due. She watched him grow.

When she first saw Oberon, with little Kantaka running at her side, Oberon greeted her thus. "What a lovely changeling." He smiled as wide as a hunter's moon. "That's a king's son. I can tell." He held out his hands. "Give him to me."

Perhaps in a different mood, her reply might have been more tempered. Perhaps not. If her retort had Oberon storming off and making war with her revels at each turn, she did not care. It the world was out of order, she did not care.

She was without care right up until one Midsummer's night when love struck her blind as sudden as a malaise. When she fell in love with a mortal with a donkey's head, and the Queen of Illusions did not know true from false.

She made her peace with Oberon with a kiss. She danced in the dew with heavy steps. She went back with heavy wings to tell Abla of what had occurred.

Abla sitting by the banks of the Western sea, the waves lapping over her feet smiled and said, "We will get him back."

"We shall," said Titania on a sudden thought. She knew just where to get the chariot that flew. A sacred stone that drew the eye to look within.

They sat a long hour or so in the sweet summer air and gossiped on how such a thing might be done. 

It was a short flight from there to doing it.

**Author's Note:**

> If you like my fiction, check out my profile for other information on my writing.


End file.
